WANJIRU REMAINS MAN TO BEAT IN LONDON
By David Monti
(c) 2010 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
LONDON (23-Apr) -- Samuel Wanjiru's record in the marathon is short,
but nearly impeccable: four victories in five starts, and every race
faster than two hours and seven minutes. He's already won three of the
World Marathon Majors (WMM) races at Chicago, London and the Olympic
Games, was the WMM overall champion for the 2008/2009 season, and has
already earned millions of dollars in appearance fees, prize money and
endorsements.
Speaking to reporters here today, Wanjiru maintained his usual cheery
bearing. He seemed unperturbed by his extraordinary trip with other
African athletes via private plane which took them from Nairobi via
Djibouti, Asmara, Luxor, Madrid and finally to London, arriving
yesterday afternoon. It's all part of the job.
"The travel was very good," Wanjiru said in a press conference today.
"They did a good job to get from Kenya to here. They did a good job."
But behind that nearly constant smile, Wanjiru hides a vicious streak
which is readily apparent in his racing. He has developed a punishing
racing style, using multiple hard surges to tire his opponents before
scampering away to victory. He did this most effectively when he set
his Olympic Marathon record in Beijing in 2008, and again here last
year when he encouraged the pacemakers to press the pace early and tire
his opponents. Mostly self-coached, Wanjiru has developed his own
workouts to perfect his surging technique.
"Sometimes I do it in training," he said. "I run for five kilometers and rest for four kilometers."
Instead of training in one of the established Kenyan camps that his
manager, Federico Rosa, has set up in Eldoret, Kaptagat or Kapsait,
Wanjiru prefers to stay near his home in Nyahururu where he has a more
informal training group. Sometimes training with former world 10,000m
champion Charles Kamathi, Rosa said in an interview that Wanjiru
developed unusual self-discipline from his six years in Japan where he
attended high school in Sendai then moved to the Japanese corporate
system with the Toyota Kyushu team. He takes training advice from
Rosa's chief coach, Claudio Beardelli, but Wanjiru has developed his
own training plan and workouts.
"This is working very well," deadpanned Rosa.
For Sunday's race, Wanjiru said that he wasn't particularly concerned
about the finish time, but that he expected the race to be fast, in the
2:04's, even though he rated the course as "very hard with a lot of
curves and slopes." (He noted that the Chicago course was much faster).
"Let me say on Sunday, it's a tough race," he said. "Everyone wants to
see who will fight each other." He added: "I don't know about a world
record, but a course record is possible."
After losing to Martin Lel in London in 2008 in a sprint finish,
Wanjiru made sure the designated pacemakers went out hard here last
year. Kenyans Elijah Keitany, Sammy Kosgei and John Kales split the
first mile in 4:35 and the first (downhill) 5 km in 14:06, a 1:58:59
marathon pace. The halfway mark was hit in 1:01:35, forcing the
exhausted pacers to slow down. When the pace sagged, Wanjiru rested,
then attacked again with a 4:37 19th mile, dropping everyone but fellow
Olympic medallists Tsegaye Kebede of Ethiopia and Jaouad Gharib of
Morocco. More surges in the final kilometers dropped Gharib first,
then Kebede, giving Wanjiru the victory in a personal best and course
record 2:05:10.
Race director Dave Bedford has stacked his field against Wanjiru
(London is never a set-up race for one athlete). In addition to Kebede
(2:05:18 PB) and Gharib (2:05:27), there are also Kenyans Duncan Kibet
(2:04:27), Abel Kirui (2:05:04) and Emmanuel Mutai (2:06:15), and the
world half-marathon record-holder Zersenay Tadese, who dropped out here
last year in his marathon debut, weakened by an illness.
When he's not training, Wanjiru revealed that he enjoys karaoke, a
hobby he learned in Japan. His favorite Japanese song is titled
"Sakura," a song which gets it's name from a particularly beautiful
flowering Japanese cherry tree.
When Wanjiru gets back to training after this race, he appears to have
Haile Gebrselassie's world marathon record in mind. Then again, he
might return to Chicago to defend his title.
"I think after this one I will train for Berlin," he mused. "I'm not sure. Maybe Chicago."
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